Despite the significant progress made in reducing violence against women, young women continue to face the highest rates of dating violence and sexual assault. In the last year, one in 10 teens has reported being physically hurt on purpose by a boyfriend or girlfriend.

Tell Congress to protect Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act and Social Security!

Conservative lawmakers are trying to put Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act on the chopping block instead of making the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share of taxes.

This week Health Care for America Now (HCAN) and its partners are planning a massive push to let the deficit fearmongers know where the American people stand: Cuts to these vital programs are unacceptable, and we cannot continue to let wealthy corporations get away with paying less than their fair share of taxes.

To break through the clutter, HCAN is using the social media tool Thunderclap to ensure that our message is heard. Thunderclap allows Twitter and Facebook users to send the same message at the same time, amplifying their words for maximum impact.

Choose “Support with Twitter” or “Support with Facebook” – or both! With your help, thousands of people across the country will demand that big corporations pay their fair share and that Washington not cut important programs like health care and Social Security.

Last week we bore witness to a historic event: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s decision toopened wide the doors of opportunity to women in the Armed Services and eliminated the last vestige of government-sanctioned sex discrimination in the United States.

Please join us in thanking Secretary Panetta for lifting the ground combat exclusion and opening opportunities for women to serve the United States in all military occupations.

The wars of the 21st century have no clear-cut front lines: For years, women have been performing superbly in a broad range of vital military occupations, including unofficially in ground combat, risking injury and death to serve our country. Secretary Panetta’s historic announcement reflects this reality. It also confirms that to be successful, a modern military must have access to the best and brightest, men and women.

This decision was the result of long, hard work.

For the Center, this decision is the culmination of years of work. In the early 1990s, our analysis of gender-stereotyped limitations and our advocacy efforts helped secure congressional legislation and Defense Department policies that opened 260,000 military positions to women, including on combat ships and in combat aircraft.

Since then we’ve had to beat back efforts by some in Congress to restrict women’s military service, and we’ve worked hard to educate the public and policymakers about the important military roles women are performing and how well they are performing them, including in combat. We also worked with Defense Department advisory committees and met with Pentagon officials to advance recommendations and press for opening all military positions to women. In 2010, submarine service was opened to women, and in 2012 approximately 14,000 additional positions were opened, both precursors of last week’s momentous decision to lift all restrictions on women’s military service.

Now, if the best person for the job is a woman, she will no longer be barred from that job simply because of her gender. As President Obama said in his inaugural address, “our journey is not complete,” but we have just passed a significant milepost along the way.

Thanks to the women in this room and people all across the country, we worked really hard — and it’s now been more than three years since Congress passed the Affordable Care Act and I signed it into law. It’s been nearly a year since the Supreme Court upheld the law under the Constitution. And, by the way, six months ago, the American people went to the polls and decided to keep going in this direction. So the law is here to stay.

I’ll do everything in my power to make sure nothing like this happens again by holding the responsible parties accountable, by putting in place new checks and new safeguards, and going forward, by making sure that the law is applied as it should be — in a fair and impartial way.

They exemplified the very idea of citizenship — that with our God-given rights come responsibilities and obligations to ourselves and to others. They embodied that idea. That’s the way they died. That’s how we must remember them. And that’s how we must live.